Jonathan Alter > Quotes

“We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“It’s time for America to move and to speak, not with boasting and belligerence, but with a quiet strength—to depend in world affairs not merely on the size of an arsenal but on the nobility of ideas—and to govern at home not by confusion and crisis but with grace and imagination and common sense.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“And by laying the groundwork for a system centered on home ownership rather than the public housing popular in Europe, the New Deal made possible the great postwar housing boom that populated the Sun Belt and boosted millions of Americans into the middle class, where, ironically, they often became Republicans.”
― Jonathan Alter

“But Carter was also an early believer that Western music could help hollow out the Soviet system. In 1977 the White House helped the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band become the first rock-and-roll band to play on Russian soil, part of an infusion of Western values that Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev later said “taught the young there was another life.” Anatoly Dobrynin, who served as the Soviet ambassador in Washington through five presidencies, conceded in his memoirs that Carter’s human rights policies “played a significant role” in the Soviet Union loosening its grip at home and in Eastern Europe.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Nowhere in the Constitution of the United States or the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights or the Emancipation Proclamation, the Old Testament or the New Testament, do you find the words ‘economy’ or ‘efficiency.’ Not that these two words are unimportant. But you discover other words like honesty, integrity, fairness, liberty, justice, love.… Words which describe what a government of human beings ought to be.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter also showed respect by becoming the first American president to visit sub-Saharan Africa while in office: a state visit to Nigeria in 1978. He invited more African heads of state to the White House in his first year than any of his predecessors had in four.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“To him, that wasn't tough but, rather, a sign of insecurity, and he viewed the killer instinct that he lacked as a bogus prerequisite for good leadership.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter felt that human rights are impossible to secure in a society wracked by violence. He wasn’t prioritizing peace over human rights so much as saying the former was a prerequisite for the latter. He believed “war is the greatest violation of human rights” and vowed to continue talking to war criminals because they were the ones with the power to stop people from killing each other.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“The radical shift in the role of the vice president would be one of Carter’s enduring legacies—and the most significant strengthening of the American constitutional system in the second half of the twentieth century.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“During Carter’s visit to Seoul in 1979, President Park angered him by delivering what Carter called in his journal “an abusive harangue” about how even that tiny reduction in forces—just 0.5 percent of the six hundred thousand South Korean troops already defending the country—would jeopardize his national security. Carter ignored Park’s rudeness because he had what he considered a higher purpose: saving his soul. On the last day of his visit, after official business was completed, he talked to the South Korean president about becoming a Christian. Like Gierek in Poland, Park never fully embraced Christianity, but Carter’s unusual decision to raise the matter strengthened religious freedom in South Korea.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“When Carter first talked to Andrew Young in late 1976 about leaving Congress to become his ambassador to the United Nations, Young resisted. He told the president-elect he would better serve Carter’s interests by staying in the House of Representatives, where Carter knew almost no one. Young suggested that Congresswoman Barbara Jordan should be his UN ambassador. “But she didn’t march with King, and you did,” Carter told him. The president-elect felt that the credibility of his human rights campaign abroad depended on its connection to the American civil rights movement. On the day Young was sworn in, Carter handed him a note that said: “Ask African leaders what we can do together.” Young believed the first word, Ask, spoke volumes about the transformation under way.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“It would be a long ten days before Sadat and Begin were in the same room at the same time again. In the meantime, Carter would meet for many hours alone with each one, a level of personal diplomacy unmatched by any other American president.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“But that wasn't how Carter rolled.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“As they resumed discussions that evening, Carter was still angry. He told Begin he "won't beat around the bush." He would not have invited him to Camp David in the first place if he had known he wanted to stay in the occupied territories forever.

"What you want to do is make the West Bank part of Israel." Carter said coldly. "It looks like subterfuge." He wondered what had happened to the full autonomy Begin had pledged earlier to the Palestinians on the West Bank.

Begin's view was that autonomy was not sovereignty; and given the West Bank's very close proximity to Israel, his country needed to maintain ultimate control over all security questions. This would be the essential Israeli position for decades to come.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“By coincidence the near-breakdown of the talks occurred on the same day that the news media was allowed its only visit. Reporters had been kept several miles away from Camp David and fed largely useless scraps of information by spokesmen. Now they bussed in for a mere forty-five minutes and seated in bleachers to witness an evening ceremony featuring the US Marine band.

Even from a distance, the press corps could tell that all three leaders looked glum, and the talks were not going well. Beyond that, reporters got nothing. After the press buses were loaded to leave, Jerry Rafshoon noticed that Barbara Walters was not aboard. He found her hiding in a stall in the ladies room. She'd hoped in vain to stay behind and find out what was happening.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Rick Hertzberg noted that Americans admire ruthlessness in the waging of war but not peace. Carter was "a Patton of peace," Hertzberg said, referring to General George S. Patton, whose single-minded devotion to achieving his objectives during World War II was remembered longer than the harsh criticism he received from many contemporaries for improper behavior.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“The most surprising supporter of the treaties outside the Senate was the Oscar-winning actor John Wayne, a conservative Republican and icon of cowboy integrity. Wayne’s first wife was Panamanian, and his next two were also Latinas, and he and Torrijos had become fishing buddies. He let Bob Pastor—Carter’s top aide on the issue—ghostwrite dozens of letters and articles in support of the treaties, many of which pointed out that “General Torrijos has never followed the Marxist line.” Wayne contacted every senator and, as he told the president, “all the people who write me hysterical letters.” When Wayne saw Reagan’s fund-raising letter attacking the treaties, he privately scolded his old friend: “Dear Ronnie,” he wrote. “I’ll show you point by God damn point in the treaty where you are misinforming people. This is not my point of view against your point of view. These are facts.”VII”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“And looking tough was certainly good for Carter politically. But if that had been his only motive - and if he had been a different kind of president - he might have sent troops somewhere (as six of his predecessors had) or bombed some country (as all of his successors have). That would have ultimately been more popular than canceling US participation in the Olympics and slamming the farm belt and nascent tech sector with embargoes. In the end, Carter managed to show resolve without imperiling American lives - just as he intended.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Even some of Carter's supporters felt he would have seemed stronger had he taken symbolically tough action early on, as President Reagan did in invading the tiny island of Grenada in 1983. But that wasn't how Carter rolled. He made concessions to the politics of national security but never felt the need to prove his toughness, especially if such gestures might cost American lives. To him, that wasn't tough but, rather, a sign of insecurity, and he viewed the killer instinct that he lacked as a bogus prerequisite for good leadership.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“A President that... seemed so inordinately pure that people were waiting for a way to take the luster off. New York Times columnist William Safire lead the charge. Safire was a talented writer and clever analyst that had served Nixon as a publicist and speech writer for twenty-five years before turning to journalism. In column after column he set out to dilute the seriousness of Nixon's crimes by inflating one-day Washington flaps into 'scandals' that he artfully made smell vaguely of Watergate. Often by attaching a "-gate" suffix. Unlike many columnists who ranged widely over topics, Safire was like a dog with a bone when he ripped into a story that might damage Democrats.”
― Jonathan Alter

“In Warsaw in 1977 he made an unscheduled and highly symbolic visit to the head of Poland’s Catholic Church, Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski, and advised Edward Gierek, the first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, to speak more often with the cardinal. “It’s never too late” to become a believer, he told Gierek, skillfully exploiting the tension between Gierek’s ancestral Catholicism and the atheism of Communist doctrine.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Long-distance runners are a breed of their own,” Clark remembered. “They are generally thin, somewhat introverted, friendly as a group, dedicated to self-improvement, [and] intelligent.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Hayakawa asked Carter questions about his book and the nuances of semantics, his specialty. Could any other American president have stayed awake to read the book, much less answer the questions to the senator’s satisfaction? Carter did.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“He would negotiate with the devil if he thought he could get a hearing,” Young said.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“As a boy, Jimmy sent a nickel every week to Baptist missionaries building hospitals and schools in China.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Supporters were heartened when hawkish Democrat Tom McIntyre of New Hampshire decided to deliver an impassioned speech attacking “the bully boys of the radical Right.” He told his wife as he left for the floor, “Come and watch me lose my seat.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“James Laney, the president of Emory University, liked to say that Carter was “the only president who ever used the White House as a stepping-stone.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“I want a government that is as good, and honest, and decent, and truthful, and fair, and competent, and compassionate, and as filled with love as are the American people.” Love”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Like a Catholic sinner in the confessional, he salved his private liberal conscience and protected his public conservative image at the same time.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

“Carter’s human rights policy was “ambiguous, ambivalent, and ambidextrous,” as Hodding Carter (no relation), Derian’s husband and the State Department spokesman, described it.”
― Jonathan Alter, His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life